Women’s Studies
Women’s studies – also referred to as feminology – is an academic field that relies on feminist and interdisciplinary methods in order to place women’s lives and women’s experience at the center of research. At the same time, it studies the social and cultural constructions of sex and gender, systems of privilege and oppression, and the relations between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social statuses, such as race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, and disability (Shaw & Lee, 2014).
Women’s studies served as a precondition for the emergence of gender studies.
Madge Dawson, an Australian feminist, became a pioneer of women’s studies, since she was the first to teach a course entitled “Women in a Changing World” at the University of Sydney in 1956. In 1969, the first accredited courses in women’s studies began to appear in the United States.
Four stages are usually distinguished in the development of women’s studies.
The late 1960s and the 1970s were the stage of the “add women and stir” method. The name of this stage belongs to Charlotte Bunch, who first formulated this expression at the annual conference of the National Women’s Studies Association in the United States in 1979. During this period, women were at the center of attention as a social group that had previously been excluded from traditional humanities and social-scientific knowledge.
The use of a new women-centered approach soon showed that practically all traditional disciplines had been “gender-blind”: they reflected male biases and used concepts that did not take women’s experience into account. For example, sociological studies of labour excluded the study of domestic labour and volunteer work, which were traditional forms of women’s activity; studies of the Enlightenment ignored the position of women during that period; and the history and sociology of social movements left no place for women’s movements.
Thus, during this period, women’s lives and experiences, as well as women’s approaches to the analysis of facts, phenomena, and processes, were made visible. For example, the names and works of Christine de Pizan and other authors of early treatises in defense of women’s rights were restored to history, as were the names of women scholars and literary authors, women sociologists and psychologists of the nineteenth century, whose research on sex and gender became an intellectual foundation of contemporary feminism (Tolstokorova, 2005, p. 205).
The early 1980s marked the stage of revising traditional knowledge and academic courses. New areas of knowledge came into the focus of women researchers and teachers, including the body, violence, private life, and the nature of patriarchy. In other words, the new approach raised questions about disciplines themselves. For example: how did the privileged position of male scholars influence the production of scientific knowledge? What was selected as worthy of scientific, historical, sociological, and other forms of knowledge? (Tolstokorova, 2005, p. 206).
The mid-1980s were characterized by attention to differences and inequalities among women themselves, including class, racial, ethnic, age-related, and other differences, as well as by an understanding of the diversity of women’s experiences. The development of women’s studies, and later gender studies, as well as related university courses, became possible largely because a significant number of women entered universities, especially as scholars and teachers in the humanities and social sciences.
These women drew the attention of scholars and the wider public to the absence of research on women’s role in history and science, to the cultural formation of femininity and masculinity, and to ideas about the roles of the sexes in society. Works were published on the long-term discrimination against women in public and private life, in the labour market, on limited access to education and professional development, and on women’s limited access to decision-making in politics. By deepening the study of relations between the sexes and examining the relationship between gender and power, women’s studies challenged traditional ideas about women’s roles and about sex differences that had become entrenched in history, literature, psychology, and sociology (Tolstokorova, 2005, p. 206).
The 1990s were the stage associated with the development of a global infrastructure and with increased attention to international women’s issues. Educational programmes and research projects on women’s issues began to spread in Western Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. Regular international summer institutes, conferences, and congresses were founded with the support of numerous women’s organizations. This led to an intensive exchange of information and experience among scholars and teachers.
Educational programmes acquired an international and global orientation. In connection with the growing number of publications produced in postcolonial states and countries of the Third World, contemporary women’s studies programmes place emphasis on issues of politics, socioeconomic development, militarism, reproductive rights, refugees, and other topics (Malkina-Pykh, 2006, p. 35).
The main reason for the transformation of women’s studies into gender studies was the persistent identification of women’s studies with feminism. Even when deprived of radicalism, feminism sometimes acquired a spirit of intellectual and ideological closedness, denying a place within its theory to other studies not connected exclusively with women’s issues (Holovashenko, 2004, p. 87).
References:
Holovashenko, I. O. (2004). Stanovlennia teorii genderu [The formation of gender theory]. In Osnovy teorii genderu: Navchalnyi posibnyk [Foundations of gender theory: A textbook] (pp. 79–108). Kyiv: K.I.S. [in Ukrainian].
Malkina-Pykh, I. G. (2006). Gendernaia terapiia: Spravochnik prakticheskogo psikhologa [Gender therapy: A handbook for the practical psychologist]. Moscow: Eksmo. [in Russian].
Shaw, S. M., & Lee, J. (2014). Women’s voices, feminist visions: Classic and contemporary readings (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Tolstokorova, A. V. (2005, December 22). Vplyv zhinochoho rukhu na filosofiiu vyshchoi osvity: Zakhidnyi dosvid ta ukrainski perspektyvy [The influence of the women’s movement on the philosophy of higher education: Western experience and Ukrainian perspectives]. In Amerykanska filosofiia osvity ochyma ukrainskykh doslidnykiv: Materialy Vseukrainskoi naukovo-praktychnoi konferentsii [American philosophy of education through the eyes of Ukrainian researchers: Proceedings of the All-Ukrainian Scientific and Practical Conference] (pp. 200–206). Poltava. [in Ukrainian].
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